If you can save money at all by not getting an unlocked CPU (since you're considering mismatching it with an H81 board) then do it and put that money towards a board. My wife's new system is a Haswell i5 4430 with a Gigabyte H87M-D3H. the board is great.

edit: to answer your edit, no. No over clock on H81. The H87 board I got has multiplier settings in the BIOS but the CPU ignores them.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do.

derFunkenstein wrote:If you can save money at all by not getting an unlocked CPU (since you're considering mismatching it with an H81 board) then do it and put that money towards a board. My wife's new system is a Haswell i5 4430 with a Gigabyte H87M-D3H. the board is great.

I'm not saying you shouldn't upgrade (it's probably time). But you can get a replacement mobo for ~$60. I actually just bought one of these from the same seller last week for $50. Board came well packaged, looked entirely unused (no dust ANYWHERE), and shipping was pretty quick.

What IS your tight budget? This assumedly needs to include CPU+mobo+RAM since you're likely running DDR2 on the C2Q.

A 4670K is a good chip but if your budget is tight and your Q6600 overclocks to around 3GHz then you can probably do worse than to pick up a used S775 motherboard only on eBay or similar.

I'm getting the itch to upgrade my Q9550 (2.8GHz stock) but mainly because the old SATA2 platform is holding back my SSD and because I have a 120Hz television hooked up to it. Most games are still GPU limited unless I turn down graphics options far enough to reach 120fps. The Core2 is capable of pegging Crysis3, Hawken, BF4 and Titanfall (my current vices) at 60Hz vsync most of the time. It's only when I shoot for the moon and aim for 120Hz that it lets me down....

If you can afford it, then the 4670 is likely to be as fast as Intel will make for a while. You could hold out for Devil's Canyon, but if you're seriously into your overclocking then you'll de-lid anyway....

Some people ask me why I have always enclosed my signature in spoiler tags; There is a good reason for that, but I can't elaborate without giving away the plot twist.

Asus makes the best boards IMHO. Don't get cheap if you can of course, you will save yourself the trouble later on.

This doesn't support Crossfire or SLI but it's quite decent in features.

If it's to expensive, save on the CPU front. A locked quad will be sufficient, but then again, a locked CPU doesn't need a Z87 chipset, you can go for a H87 one.

Well the model that you are suggesting is available at $200 in India (This is the cheapest of Asus's offering) that's completely out of my budget, MSI Z87 G41 is at $100 which seems a perfect fit for now. Also, i don't want to skip on overclocking, i will do it on the day one.

I read the reviews on newegg seems like its an average product, but i am unable to find anything better in this pricing range.

EDIT: I have one more query - Can i use my existing thermaltake 120 Ultra on socket 1150 motherboard ??

LGA 1155/1150 is 3mm further between mounting holes than LGA 775. See here and here. Most universal CPU retention brackets will have slotted-type holes to accommodate this. Depending on your cooler's mouting bracket/backplate, you could achieve the same result with a dremmel. If not, that shiny new CPU will come with an Intel heatsink that can tide you over until you've got some money for a good inexpensive aftermarket cooler. I really don't think you NEED to OC right away. I look at OCing as more of a "future-proofing" measure, bump up the performance as the CPU gets older to keep it up-to-snuff with current offerings.

DPete27 wrote:I really don't think you NEED to OC right away. I look at OCing as more of a "future-proofing" measure, bump up the performance as the CPU gets older to keep it up-to-snuff with current offerings.

I think you are right, it also gives me the chance to get my hands dirty and make a custom bracket of my own.EDIT: I have ordered the i5 4670K processor - now need to finalize on Mother board.

Your 1x2GB and 1x4GB DDR3 should run in asynchronous dual-channel mode (or is it "Flex Mode" nowadays?), have a wee Google if you want, surprisingly little performance impact in most real-world applications.

New system is ready but i am now facing a new problem, my HD 7970 is not working on my LED TV, there is just no display whatsoever. I tried to update the mobo bios, driver up - nothing is working out.

When the system starts the LED would detect display signal as 1080p at 50hz but would show no information, i tried the card on other system and it is working fine but it just wont handshake with my LED.

Your suggestion will be highly appreciated, below is the full system specs